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House Democrats may file an ethics complaint if Republican congressional leaders do not open an
investigation into whether bribes were offered to win passage of the Medicare prescription drug bill,
House Democratic Whip Steny H. Hoyer (Md.) said.

A House Democratic leader said yesterday that he plans to press for an investigation by the chamber's ethics committee of alleged Republican vote-buying during deliberations on a new Medicare drug plan last November, threatening to end an informal agreement among lawmakers to refrain from triggering inquiries against one another.

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Monday he will for a third time call on Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) to urge the ethics committee to investigate alleged House floor bribery, but if the Republican leader continues to balk, he vowed Democrats will be forced to file a complaint.

If the House ethics committee doesn’t investigate allegations of arm-twisting during voting on a Medicare bill, a House Democratic leader said Tuesday that Democrats will file a formal complaint within a few weeks.

In a Jan. 20 letter to the speaker, Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the Democratic whip, said an investigation by the House ethics committee was needed to protect the reputation of the House after Representative Nick Smith, Republican of Michigan, said groups and lawmakers had offered support for his son's Congressional campaign if Mr. Smith backed the measure, which passed 220 to 215.

House Minority Whip Hoyer and House Administration Chairman Ney
today lauded the passage of the FY04 omnibus appropriations bill
for its inclusion of a $1.5 billion earmark to help fund the 2002 Help America Vote Act

If ever there was a case that cried out for investigation by the House ethics committee and the Justice Department, it is the evident bribery and extortion attempts applied to Rep. Nick Smith (R-Mich.)

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer’s (D-Md.) speech Monday to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) will cap a yearlong strategy aimed at preventing an exodus of Jewish voters from Democratic ranks.

The House's second-ranking Democrat yesterday called for an ethics investigation into a Michigan congressman's assertion that unnamed GOP colleagues offered $100,000 for his son's congressional campaign if the lawmaker would vote for a contentious Medicare bill.

Angry House Democrats, still smarting over extraordinary parliamentary maneuvers that Republicans used last month to pass the Medicare bill President Bush signed Monday, sought to upstage Bush's big moment by taking to the floor to embarrass the House leadership.

The congressional year ends with the future of President Bush's vaunted energy bill uncertain and no decision on how to fix the nation's crumbling highways or avoid a looming trade war with Europe. With Republicans in control of the White House and both houses of Congress, it wasn't supposed to be this hard.

In the pre-dawn partisan tumult after the extended Medicare vote, Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer, D-Md., took to the microphones to liken the situation to one 16 years before — an instance that remains one of the formative moments of the House's current political dynamic.

Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (Md.), the House's second-ranking Democrat, hoped to use funds from a $138 billion spending bill now before Congress to upgrade the computer system at St. Mary's College of Maryland, modernize laboratories at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, and support a nonprofit group that repairs the homes of poor, elderly and disabled Marylanders...

Senate leaders told rank-and-file Members on Tuesday that the Veterans Day holiday has been canceled and a five-day workweek would be instituted for the remainder of the session, as Nov. 21 has now been officially identified as the new target day for adjournment...